Mydiinterspecies: talk talk on its way to nowhere.

THE strangest thing after the diversity of nature in general, is our human capacity to communicate with each other through our many sided cultural habits. Maybe Christmas is one of the most symbolic happenings of the human race: the celebration of birth in the darkest days of the year. By now our whole world is completely dominated by symbols in color, form, size, sound, movement, language, song, dance, music & rituals.

Traffic signs, warnings, curses, blessings, tenderness, hate, aggression, forgiveness, insight, flashlights, screams, whispers, dreams & "reality" ...

Any combination of these sources will result in more complex meanings, interpretations, variations, discoveries, integration, diversification & uni-fication: richer fantasy, creative strivings, acceptation, wonder & eternal wandering in g d's kingdom of heaven on earth. Perfection of humility ...

We are fascinated by interchange of meaning & transfer of significant concepts. If we only accept the narrower etymological meaning of language by defining it as that which is produced by the human vocal organs and received by the hearing apparatus, we shall have to deny the name of "language" to these more abstract transfers of meaning. But if we accept the definition of language as any transfer of meaning, they are forms of language differing in degree but not in kind from spoken &/or written messages. In their anxiety to restrict language to a pattern of sounds, too many linguists have forgotten that the sound symbols of the spoken tongue are neither more nor less symbolical of human thought and human meaning than the various forms of activity (gestural, pictorial, ideographic, artistic, virtual & cyber-special) by which men have conveyed countless significant messages to one another since the dawn of history. It is a commonplace among linguists that the spoken language antedates the so very many written languages by many thousands, perhaps millions, of years. Insofar as the written language is a symbolical replica of the spoken tongue, this is undoubtedly true. But there is little or no assurance that organized sound language, as distinguished from mere animal cries, antedates pictographs painted on walls of caves or petroglyphs carved on rocks, whose purpose undoubtedly was to convey a significant message or establish a permanent record. Some scientists claim that certain animal species communicate by nonlinguistic devices; that bees, for example, convey significant messages to one another by odor/scent, & by dancing in their hives, or that ants use their antennae in a significant way: some of the stories in this connection are very impressive! The nighthawk is said to emit varieties of sounds which convey significant messages to its fellows. Dolphins are claimed to possess mysterious forms of communication (extrasensory, perhaps, o.s.l.t.?) which permits various quasi-human forms of collaboration between two or more of the species. Every birth (!) is a many folded expression of the real spirit of "Christmas" in each of us ...